This past Friday Egidio and I had our big romantic weekend away together… yes, the annual NYS Maple Syrup Conference…..our “sweet” weekend!!

Nothing screams I love you like an auditorium full of men in all camo with women on their arms wearing shirts that say “I’d Tap that!”

We arrived in Verona New York just in time to check into the conference and check out the vendors. We actually missed a class that I really wanted to take but no worries I am sure they will have it again next year. Last year we attended this conference before we had ever tapped a tree… This year with a little bit of experience under our belts and our new farm, we have a better idea of what we will need for the upcoming maple season. On our shopping list : miles of tubing, hundreds of taps, a vacuum system and an reverse osmosis system. That is thousands of dollars worth of equipment! That is all before we head out into the woods to collect 50 gallons of sap that will be boiled down into one gallon of syrup. Keep that in mind the next time you reach for that bottle of pure maple syrup and wonder why it costs so much. Pure maple syrup is labor intensive! Making pure maple syrup is addictive!

We had a romantic dinner. The setting: The cafeteria at Verona High School. The meal: Pulled pork, soggy corn and tossed salad…. on paper plates.

We left the conference eager to get to our hotel… this is after all, our weekend away. We stayed at the posh Day’s Inn in Utica.

WARNING!!!!

NEVER STAY AT THE DAY’S INN IN UTICA!!!!!

Check in was a breeze. When we got to the room, we opened the door, took one step in and stopped in our tracks. You could hear the collective gasp! It was about 40 degrees in the room! We raced around trying to find a light switch to see what was going on. We had a king suite that was absolutely enormous… the room had one heater that was about a foot and a half long and was turned OFF! Okay, no problem, lets crank it up… it should not take long.  Boy were we wrong! Wearing our coats we unpacked our stuff. The bathroom floor tile was so cold that it hurt to walk on it with your socks. We turned on the shower as hot as it would go trying to warm the room with the steam. I took a hot shower expecting it to be a little warmer by the time I got out… NOPE!!

Ya’ know whats worse than being in a very cold room in your pj’s??? Being in a very cold room in your pj’s with wet hair!!

I cranked up the heater as high as it would go and the air coming out of it started to feel a little warmer so we figured okay, it will get better. It was late and we didn’t want to switch rooms at this point. We thought that any other vacant room must also be cold…so we decided to wait it out.

I know what you are thinking…. there are things you can do in that hotel room to stay warm…. but it was still freaking cold!!!!

With the blankets over our heads we went to sleep. If you know me well, you know I pee like every half hour. I woke up and really had to go… I pulled the blanket down off my face to focus on the clock. I was praying that it would be 6 am… I was thinking if it was close to 6, I could get through it. I could hold it until 6:30, and then it would be time to get the hell out of the frozen tundra that we had just spent the night in. As my vision came into focus…. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! It wasn’t even midnight!!!!!!!

I yelled at the top of my lungs… “I CAN’T F*#@%&G TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!” I threw off that poor excuse of a blanket and grabbed the phone.. I think I scared the hell out of Egidio. He jumped up and asked “Where are you going?”

In my frozen uncollected thoughts I remember telling him I could sleep on the floor in the hallway of the hotel or outside in the car… either would be better than the arctic hell hole we were in!!!  I called the front desk and when the guy answered all he heard was a hysterical woman yelling that we were freezing. “Bring blankets!! And lots of them!!! I yelled.

Egidio beat me to the bathroom, as he was peeing he yelled out to me. “Hey, there is ice in the toilet.”

The man brought us 3 heavy blankets and asked if he could come in and check the heater. He laughed and said…”its cold because you have it set on Hi, If you want it to get warm you need to set it on low” Ohhhh…. of course you do… because Utica is apparently located in opposite land!!   What were we thinking?!?!

Needless to say, I have never been more anxious to get the hell out of a hotel room in all of my life! Packing consisted of throwing all of our crap into the suitcase in one big bundle. I grabbed our bottles of water out of the mini-fridge and they were warm!! . Our bottles of water were warmer in the fridge than they would have been if they were left out in the room. And yes, walking to the car was warmer than our room. You just can’t make this stuff up!